Winter Park

A Silver Alert has been canceled for a 76-year-old Winter Park woman who went missing Monday about 11 a.m. Patricia Denno Jones was found in Sumter County and returned home about 8:30 p.m. A Silver Alert was issued because she has dementia and did not have her medications with her, officers said. sjacobson@tribune.com or 407-540-5981

1. White's OK in winter (sometimes). In big Northern cities, the fashion police are likely to issue a citation to anyone wearing white shoes (or jacket, jeans, belt or handbag) after Labor Day and before Memorial Day. In Florida the clothing cops are more lenient. They may frown on white accessories teamed with dark business or evening wear. But they give the nod to white when it is confined to casual, resort-type settings - and provided the weather is reasonably warm.The real problem with white is the way it shows dirt.

I'm ticked off at all of the attention on soccer as a sport. Soccer is not a sport, it is an activity. Soccer has zero offense, zero defense, zero scoring. Watching paint dry, grass grow or a sundial is more exciting than watching boring soccer. I'm really ticked off at women who talk on their phones in nails salons while the rest of us came to relax. And I am ticked off at the salons for not posting signs to not use phones. And I wish more other customers would ask (politely) for them to get off the phones.

Only months after it arrived in Metro Orlando, St. Petersburg-based Synovus Bank of Tampa Bay will close its only local branch, citing a strategy to refocus on its core markets, the bank said recently. Synovus plans to shutter its Winter Park office at the end of business on Sept. 12, less than six months after it took over the former First Florida Bank office, officials said. Synovus completed its consolidation with Naples-based First Florida in late April. Both banks were affiliates of the Columbus, Ga.-based Synovus holding company, which has 36 banks in five states in the Southeast.

Orange County authorities are investigating a fire that occurred early Tuesday morning. A structure fire was reported at Kentucky Avenue and Formosa Avenue in Winter Park about 3:35 a.m., according to Orange County Fire Rescue. An agency spokeswoman said the vacant trailer was fully engulfed with crews arrived. No other details were released.

A fire in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Winter Park injured a child Christmas Day. The blaze engulfed two vehicles in the 6000 block of Aloma Ave. about 5 p.m., said Genevieve Latham, a spokeswoman for Orange County Fire Rescue. She was unable to provide details about the child's age, identity or injuries. Latham said firefighters received several calls for help from bystanders and arrived to find the vehicles ablaze. An adult who was not identified also was injured by smoke or fire but declined to be transported to a hospital.

Kmart is closing its Winter Park store at U.S. Highway 17-92 and Lee Road. The store has begun its liquidation sale and will close in mid-March. A lease for the store was ending and was not renewed, a Kmart spokesman said in an email. "closures are part of a series of actions we're taking to reduce on-going expenses, adjust our asset base, and accelerate the transformation of our business model," spokesman Howard Riefs said in an email. A hundred employees, mostly part time, work at the store.

Three miles of wires and utility poles began to come down in Winter Park on Friday, as the city took its first step in putting its 100-mile electric grid underground. Mayor David Strong marked the milestone at a ceremony by firing up a machine that digs sideways underground, so yards and sidewalks won't have to be excavated for the project. "I got about three minutes of training on this yesterday, so maybe you'll all want to stand back and make sure I don't blow us all up," Strong quipped at the gathering on Webster Avenue.

In recent years, Winter Park has been a deceiving little town. From the outside, everything looked fine. The brick streets were still clean. The lawns and shrub sculptures remained manicured. And the Nicole Millers continued moving off the racks on Park Avenue. But inside the houses, where no one could see, wars were being waged. Character assassinations were plotted. And whisper campaigns were launched. Winter Park was Central Florida's very own Wisteria Lane. Only it wasn't just desperate housewives involved in this civil war. There were big-moneyed development interests, political machines and at-home activists who accused anyone who disagreed with them of being corrupt.

Owen Beitsch can remember it well: about 15 years ago, when Krispy Kreme opened its coffee and donut shop on U.S. 17/92 in Winter Park. It turned out to be a popular spot, he recalled - and one that gave motorists on the roadway some headaches. “We can all remember when Krispy Kreme opened,” he said. “People couldn't drive down 17/92 because people wanted donuts.” In a similar vein, there are increased concerns about the heavy traffic trying to get into the new Lakeside development on U.S. 17/92 that now hosts the Trader Joe's supermarket and the Shake Shack burger restaurant.

• AT&T donated $40,000 to Heart of Florida United Way to fund United Way programs in the areas of income, health and basic needs throughout Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties. • Staples Foundation , the charitable arm of Staples Inc., donated $5,000 to The Center for Contemporary Dance in Winter Park. Send news releases about corporate giving to corporategiving@orlandosentinel.com . No photos, please.

The City Commission has decided to approve an agreement with the Orange County government to be a part of the federal government's Urban County Program - but only after one commissioner got some assurances that the program wouldn't aim to condemn city property for the creation of low-income housing. That was a concern of City Commissioner Carolyn Cooper, who said she did not want to renew the agreement if it ended up tying the city's hands in the future when it came to the county selecting sites for the construction of low-income housing projects.

It's hard, but not impossible, for a challenger to knock out a sitting member of Congress. Four of Florida's U.S. representatives lost their seats two years ago. Another set of challengers has taken aim at incumbents this year. It's still not clear what impact, if any, the current legal battle over the state's congressional map will have on this year's elections. Meanwhile, here are our endorsements in contested primaries in three Central Florida districts. District 7 This district, represented by 11-term Republican John Mica of Winter Park, includes most of Seminole County and portions of Orange and Volusia counties.

Midway into his historic, 57-day journey across the Pacific Ocean, 28-year-old John Wagner found himself in a simple, if exhausting, rhythm: Row, eat, sleep. Row, eat, sleep. Row, eat, sleep. "Some days, when it was dead calm, it just felt like forever," the Winter Park High graduate admits. "You'd be half-asleep as you were rowing, so you'd slump forward and bang your head against the spare oar, which woke you up - at least for a while. " The four-member crew - himself, an Aussie Ironman triathlete, a California actor and an Irish doctoral student who is the lone woman - just became the first mixed-gender team ever to row from the coast of California to Hawaii, roughly 2,400 miles.

T he city of Winter Park is now putting together an action plan that could lead to the annexation of residential and commercial properties along Fairbanks Avenue, bringing them into the city limit. Jeff Briggs, Winter Park's planning manager, said the city is likely to move forward on this project via a ballot referendum, aimed at bringing parts of Fairbanks Avenue now located in unincorporated Orange County into the city limits. The hope is that doing this will give the city a greater ability to nurture more commercial development there.

Tiffany Deli has opened in Winter Park in the spot formerly occupied by Brandywine's, a dining icon on for 40 years. The restaurant, at 505 N. Park Ave., had announced a "re-grand opening" last summer but efforts were delayed because of permitting issues. The Tiffany menu includes salads, sandwiches and other items similar to Brandywine's, plus a few new twists. hmcpherson@tribune.com